Dad Uses Facebook to Teach Daughter a Lesson

Wow! Some of you may watch the video that's posted above (and I'll add it below, too) and think I wish I could do that with a "Bravo !" thrown in. Some of you may be completely appalled. And could there be a middle of the road audience? I really want to know what your thoughts are of this father's lesson.

Please know there's some curse words in the video in case you may be offended by them.

Replies to This Discussion

I gotta say...bravo! I didn't notice the gun on his hip until he said "last time I warned ya about a bullet in your laptop" Personally, things have been changing around here - too slowly for my taste, but changing. So many kids, including mine, feel entitled to so much and think they rule the world. I'm over it. OVER. IT. The disrespect, the way they treat each other, the way they treat me...My almost 5 year old slapped me across the face today. Reared back and slapped me right across the face just as hard as he could - in a store - while sitting in the buggy at check out. Oh h*** no! I'm over this nicey nice "I don't like it when you..." or time out. I was too shocked to even be embarrased by his behavior!

Things like laptops, cell phones, video games, etc - those are priveldges. IMO, they need to be be earned and can be taken away.

Congratulations, a parent taking a stand. Children expect more and are not appeciative. However, we have allowed ourselves to dwell and dote on our children by giving them more and more. If they show disrepect, take it away!! Rewards are just that, rewards.We are the parents.

wow - he did take a stand and so true - we ask our son to take out the garbage and its a big ordeal! I feel for this dad, especially with the disrespect thing, never would have gotten away with that when I grew up!

his guy's facebook page is public (at least for now) I'm getting a kick going through it. For example:

"Never again in my entire life will I ever do anything that garnishes this much attention, both positive and negative. I really wished we'd been prepared or something... this seems like a great time to stand up and say "Stay in School" and "Drugs are bad" and so many other things. I'm just not that complex a person to know what to do with it. Never again will I have the opportunity to speak to so many people about anything.. and instead I'm sitting here stupefied."

Also:

"Media Response to Anita Li, from the Toronto Star Since you took the time to email us with your requests like we asked, I’ll take the time to give you an honest follow-up response. You’ll have to forgive me for doing so publicly though; again I want to be sure my words are portrayed the way I actually say them, not cut together to make entirely different points. Your questions were:

Q: Why did y...ou decide to reprimand your daughter over a public medium like YouTube?

A: Well, I actually just had to load the video file itself on YouTube because it’s a better upload process than Facebook, but the intended audience was her Facebook friends and the parents of those friends who saw her post and would naturally assume we let our children get away with something like that. So, to answer “Why did you reprimand her over a public medium like Facebook” my answer is this: Because that’s how I was raised. If I did something embarrassing to my parents in public (such as a grocery store) I got my tail tore up right there in front of God and everyone, right there in the store. I put the reprisal in exactly the same medium she did, in the exact same manner. Her post went out to about 452 people. Mine went out to about 550 people… originally. I had no idea it would become what it did.

Q: How effective do you think your punishment was (i.e. shooting her laptop and reading her letter online)?

A: I think it was very effective on one front. She apparently didn’t remember being talked to about previous incidents, nor did she seem to remember the effects of having it taken away, nor did the eventual long-term grounding seem to get through to her. I think she thought “Well, I’ll just wait it out and I’ll get it back eventually.” Her behavior corrected for a short time, and then it went back to what it was before and worse. This time, she won’t ever forget and it’ll be a long time before she has an opportunity to post on Facebook again. I feel pretty certain that every day from then to now, whenever one of her friends mentions Facebook, she’ll remember it and wish she hadn’t done what she did. The second lesson I want her to learn is the value of a dollar. We don’t give her everything she asks for, but you can all imagine what it’s like being the only grandchild and the first child. Presents and money come from all sides when you’re young. Most of the things she has that are “cool” were bought or gifted that way. She’s always asked for very few things, but they’re always high-dollar things (iPod, laptop, smartphone, etc). Eventually she gets given enough money to get them. That’s not learning the value of a dollar. Its knowing how to save money, which I greatly applaud in her, but it’s not enough. She wants a digital SLR camera. She wants a 22 rifle like mine. She wants a car. She wants a smart phone with a data package and unlimited texting. (I have to hear about that one every week!) She thinks all these things are supposed to be given to her because she’s got parents. It’s not going to happen, at least not in our house. She can get a job and work for money just like everyone else. Then she can spend it on anything she wants (within reason). If she wants to work for two months to save enough to purchase a $1000 SLR camera with an $800 lens, then I can guarantee she’ll NEVER leave it outside at night. She’ll be careful when she puts it away and carries it around. She’ll value it much more because she worked so hard to get it. Instead, with the current way things have been given to her, she's on about her fourth phone and just expects another one when she breaks the one she has. She's not sorry about breaking it, or losing it, she's sorry only because she can't text her friends. I firmly believe she'll be a LOT more careful when she has to buy her own $299.00 Motorola Razr smartphone. Until then, she can do chores, and lots and lots of them, so the people who ARE feeding her, clothing her, paying for all her school trips, paying for her musical instruments, can have some time to relax after they finish working to support her and the rest of the family. She can either work to make money on her own, or she will do chores to contribute around the house. She’s known all along that all she has to do is get a job and a lot of these chores will go away. But if you’re too lazy to work even to get things you want for yourself, I’m certainly not going to let you sit idly on your rear-end with your face glued to both the TV and Facebook for 5 to 6 hours per night. Those days are over.

Q: How did your daughter respond to the video and to what happened to her laptop?

A: She responded to the video with “I can’t believe you shot my computer!” That was the first thing she said when she found out about it. Then we sat and we talked for quite a long while on the back patio about the things she did, the things I did in response, etc. Later after she’d had time to process it and I’d had time to process her thoughts on the matters we discussed, we were back to a semi-truce… you know that uncomfortable moment when you’re in the kitchen with your child after an argument and you’re both waiting to see which one’s going to cave in and resume normal conversation first? Yeah, that moment. I told her about the video response and about it going viral and about the consequences it could have on our family for the next couple of days and asked if she wanted to see some of the comments people had made. After the first few hundred comments, she was astounded with the responses. People were telling her she was going to commit suicide, commit a gun-related crime, become a drug addict, drop out of school, get pregnant on purpose, and become a stripper because she’s too emotionally damaged now to be a productive member of society. Apparently stripper was the job-choice of most of the commenters. Her response was “Dude… it’s only a computer. I mean, yeah I’m mad but pfft.” She actually asked me to post a comment on one of the threads (and I did) asking what other job fields the victims of laptop-homicide were eligible for because she wasn’t too keen on the stripping thing. We agreed we learned two collective lessons from this so far: First: As her father, I’ll definitely do what I say I will, both positive and negative and she can depend on that. She no longer has any doubt about that. Second: We have always told her what you put online can affect you forever. Years later a single Facebook/MySpace/Twitter comment can affect her eligibility for a good job and can even get her fired from a job she already has. She’s seen first-hand through this video the worst possible scenario that can happen. One post, made by her Dad, will probably follow him the rest of his life; just like those mean things she said on Facebook will stick with the people her words hurt for a long time to come. Once you put it out there, you can’t take it back, so think carefully before you use the internet to broadcast your thoughts and feelings."

hahahahahahahahahahahaha! One more and I promise I'm done! But here's dad's post on how she got caught! :D

"HOW SHE GOT CAUGHT: The Dog Did It.. no, really. I finally came out and told her this today, partly because it was too funny NOT to share. When my daughter made her post, she used Facebook's privacy settings to block "Family" and "Church" friend's lists. All her other friends could see it. We, of course could not. One of our dogs is always getting in photos and therefore has her own Facebook pa...ge. It's just a cute dumb thing we did for fun. Well, the dog's profile is rarely used except when funny pictures of her are posted. Since that's not too often, and she has very few friends on Facebook, her wall is kind of bare, with relatively few posts showing up on it. The other night we gave the dog a bath and there was a funny photo we uploaded to Facebook and tagged her in. I logged in as the dog the next morning to comment on the photo. However when I logged into the dog's profile, my daughter had forgotten to add her to the "family" list.... so our family dog's profile showed her post right there on the front page. It wasn't any parent-hacking, computer spying, or monitoring of any kind.. the dog actually ratted her out completely by accident. She hasn't petted that dog all day today..."

That's just it, kids don't have respect for them selves let alone their parent(s) or any adult. All this new technology that is out their for them to use has created a new type of child that as parents we don't know how to handle. e ones who someday We didn't have any of this yet as adults we are the ones who is being questioned as how an what do we do with our children with it comes to this type of behavior. It worries me to think these kids will be someday the ones who will be running this country. I praise this man for doing this an taking a stand to show his daughter he means what he says. But at the same time if Child an Family Services was to see this video they might take it a different way. Children now days no that parents are not allowed to spank your child or as they tell them in school "tell us an we can help you by contacting services". The world is becoming a scary home for us all, with all the violence that takes place every minute of every day its no wonder children are acting the way we do. God help us all.

I think Dad got his point across. And I had to laugh at how she got turned in (effectually) by the dog. Hee!!

From reading the update, it sounds like she actually has a decent relationship with her folks and realizes she went way, way too far. She was disrespectful in the extreme*, and... well, I think she got what was coming. It's not what I would have done in response to my teenager being a dolt, but I hope I can be as creative and effective should a similarly inspiring event occur with my kids.

*I will say that him complaining that she was rebellious kind of made me laugh, because dude, she's a teenager. That's their stock in trade. But I absolutely agree with him about the lack of respect.

The video taken in and of itself can be disturbing, and I admit I was more bothered by it before I read the follow-up. Again, this isn't the action I personally would take, but judging from what I'm seeing of his family's relationship and so forth, it seems like this isn't the traumatic experience for the young lady in question that it would perhaps be for another child.

Fallsmama said:

I'll be the voice of dissent and say I think he taught her how to show rage and use violence to make a point. Pretty disgusting if you ask me ...

I'll join in that dissent. Obviously this dad doesn't spend too much time watching viral videos otherwise he'd have known this was going to go that way. I just kept shaking my head the entire time.

Granted, he must have felt fairly desperate to take a gun to a computer that he himself admits to putting time, money and effort into. To ME, that says more about how much HE values his efforts than she does. He already knew what she thought of him and his efforts.

I think there are OTHER ways to address the behavior and attitude, clearly in her statements there's a ton of both going on. However, to take a loaded gun and shoot up a computer like it's replaceable with a breath of air seems a bit overkill.

There is a major problem with kids today and entitlement, but not all kids feel that way. I know for a fact, that I wanted stuff all the time and I acted like a brat if I didn't get it, but I also knew that there was a time and a place to EARN it.

Fallsmama said:

I'll be the voice of dissent and say I think he taught her how to show rage and use violence to make a point. Pretty disgusting if you ask me ...